Grandma’s collection of barely chipped porcelain cups… The old sideboard that Uncle Télesphore claims to be in the Henri XV style, or perhaps Louis XIX…
The canvas you suspect to be an authentic Paul-Émile Borduas…
When is it worth using an auction house rather than listing on Marketplace or Kijiji?
“If you put an item on Kijiji or Marketplace and you get 20 calls after an hour, be sure you got the price wrong, trust me,” says Claude Champagne, President of Auctions Champagne. .
This is the main reason to use an auction house: to get the best price for an item that seems to have some value.
He just has an example at hand.
“There is someone who came this morning with six paintings. All the paintings were worth $50 except one, which was worth $40,000. »
“It’s a painting from 1958 that’s worth a fortune. We’re going to auction him off at the end of September and he’s going to get a lot of money for a painting he would have gotten $50 for at a garage sale. »
The Champagne Auctions employ about ten people and hold 60 to 75 auctions each year. “We buy everything, from sports cards to antique furniture,” says Claude Champagne. We do about fifteen different auctions. »
These thematic auctions bring together works of art, fine wines, sports objects, military memorabilia, old books…
The auctions are held online for a few days, with a grand finale during the last hours. Each lot is accompanied by one or more photos and a short description.
Bidders can bid on the lots as long as the auction is open. On the last evening, the lots are auctioned off one after the other.
But traditional auctions have not disappeared. IEGOR holds them live on the internet “for the things that are more important on a pecuniary level, i.e. [the] wine sales, [the] catalog sales, [the] art sales Canadian,” says auctioneer Laurent Berniard. “I shout at the camera with my hammer. »
The auction is run like a live auction, “except there’s no live, it’s just me and people on the phone and on sales platforms.”
For their part, the Auctions Champagne plan to resume indoor auction sales in the fall in the premises of the Galerie Michel-Ange, which they recently acquired.
Champagne Auctions also hold what they call “discovery sales”, where disparate lots are auctioned off.
The discovery sale concluded on July 21 was held in two sessions of 265 lots and 274 lots: sports cards, beads, lithographs, more or less old books, old comic strips, watches, toys…
A set of Batmobile pulling a Batboat on its trailer, from Corgi Toys and dating from the late 1960s, was presented there in six photos, including the original packaging. Initially estimated between $300 and $600, the lot was sold for $380.